Ohio's youngest inmates have become its most dangerous

Sunday

Dec 30, 2012 at 12:01 AMDec 30, 2012 at 11:35 AM

The most violent prisons in Ohio aren't the maximum-security facilities or those housing Death Row inmates. They're those holding teenagers. There were more assaults than inmates last year at Ohio's youth prisons, where the rate of assaults per inmate was 48 times greater than in adult lockups.

Pamela Engel, The Columbus Dispatch

The most violent prisons in Ohio aren’t the maximum-security facilities or those housing Death Row inmates.They’re those holding teenager.

There were more assaults than inmates last year at Ohio’s youth prisons, where the rate of assaults per inmate was 48 times greater than in adult lockups. An annual assessment filed this month by a court-appointed monitor said the conditions of the facilities are improving and that in certain areas, the state Department of Youth Services serves as a model for the nation.

But several Department of Youth Services staff members who spoke with The Dispatch said there isn’t enough discipline in the youth prisons and talked of dangerous environments for both staff and teens.

“We need help. And we can’t get it because everybody is scared to tell, because they don’t want to lose their job; but I’ve got to tell somebody,” said a youth specialist who works at the Circleville Juvenile Correctional Facility. He did not want his name published for fear of retaliation.

“Sooner or later, somebody is going to get killed,” he said.

A corrections officer at the Scioto Juvenile Correctional Facility in Delaware County was hospitalized in September after three inmates charged into her office and attacked her. The beating left her with a concussion, a broken nose and damage to her eye.

Ohio juvenile correctional facilities held about 680 youth in 2011. In that same year, there were 1,604 assaults, which includes intentionally striking another person, throwing any solid or liquid object at or connecting with another person, spitting at or on another person, and intentionally biting another person.

Ohio adult prisons recorded 2,486 assaults last year. The population was 50,607 in July 2011.

“We have to go in (to work) every day wondering if it’s going to be safe for us,” said Jonathan Blackford, 35, who works at the Circleville Juvenile Correctional Facility as a corrections officer, known as a youth specialist within the system.

The director of the Ohio Department of Youth Services, which operates the state’s youth prisons, said violence is not tolerated in the facilities.

“Youth receive consequences for inappropriate behavior,” said Director Harvey J. Reed. “When our staff are assaulted, I make every effort to reach out to them personally and express my sincere concern for them.”

In December, 28 employees were out on injury leave from the state’s four youth prisons. The facilities have a total staff of about 1,153.

Some youth specialists say the excessive violence is hurting morale.

“Everyone is just angry and upset. Period,” said the unnamed Circleville youth specialist. “ Something has got to be done.”

Campus-like environment

You wouldn’t know that the Scioto Juvenile Correctional Facility is a youth prison if not for the high fence surrounding the grounds.

The campus overlooks the Scioto River in Delaware County. Small buildings dot the landscape, which resembles a park with its winding pathways, benches and trees.

The “units” where the youth are kept are bright and airy inside. Paintings illustrating freedom and peace decorate the concrete walls, and zebra-striped rugs cover portions of the hard floors.

For good behavior, youth can earn time to play video games or watch television.

A point system allows youth to “purchase” items to personalize their rooms, such as sheets, comforters and photo boards. At Scioto, one female inmate proudly displayed the GED certificate she earned while in the facility.

The Department of Youth Services is the end of the line for the state’s most-dangerous youth, some of whom also have mental illness. About 500 youth are housed in four state institutions at taxpayers’ expense — about $161,497 per youth annually. By comparison, locking up an adult in a Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections facility costs, on average, about $24,871 per year.

The administration’s philosophy is that the youth should receive treatment in these facilities so they become successful members of society once they leave.

“We want them to go out of the door better than they came in the front door,” Reed said. “We want (staff) to go home and be excited about what they did and how kids change.”

But workers say this more-relaxed atmosphere breeds insubordination. Some say violence erupts because the youth think they can get away with acting out.

“The kids can do whatever they want to do. … There’s no boundaries,” said a nurse who works at the Scioto facility.

The nurse also said employees at youth prisons admit that they’re not equipped to handle the most mentally ill youth in the state.

The unnamed Circleville youth specialist told of a running joke among the staff: “He assaulted a staff, he got locked down for a few hours, he’s out; OK, when is his pizza party?”

Rehabilitation can be difficult in an environment rife with gang activity. Gang leaders recruit new youth coming into the facilities and bully them into joining, said the Circleville youth specialist who declined to be named. These youth gangs often order “hits,” or assaults, on facility staff members or other youth.

“They get caught up in it, because if they don’t, they’ll get jumped,” the youth specialist said. “They get treatment, but to save face, they have to be big and bad.”

Prisons aren’t the ideal setting for treatment and rehabilitation, but some youth are too dangerous to be left in their communities, said Lorenzo Sanchez, a Franklin County Juvenile Court magistrate.

“In the long run, we have to realize that (a juvenile correctional facility) is a prison,” he said. “You can call it the Department of Youth Services, but you can’t get the same treatment in that facility as on the outside.”

Youth specialists say there’s only so much they can do to discipline an inmate who is breaking rules.

“Let’s face it. If (a youth) assaults staff and he gets 180 days added on, what’s his punishment? How do you add time to him?” Blackford said, noting that youth must be released by the time they turn 21. As for other methods of discipline, he said, “There’s kids who do seclusion time every day.”

Reed said his administration is working on the problems.

“We’ve strived to make our facilities safer with (a special management program) for use-of-force incidents and holding youth accountable for their behavior using graduated sanctions that include ‘intervention hearings,’” he said. “We continue to engage in two-way communication with our unions to address challenges.”

Too comfortable?

Some inmates become so comfortable in the juvenile prisons that they don’t want to leave.

Beverly Wengerd, who along with her husband, owns the Guerne Heights Drive-In in Wooster, has an 18-year-old son who has been in Youth Services facilities for about four years on an assault conviction. As of November, he was incarcerated at the Indian River Juvenile Correctional Facility in Massillon.

“I think it’s just too comfortable there for him. There’s not a big pressure put on if he doesn’t want to ... complete the programming that he needs to complete,” she said.

“He knows that they can keep him there until he’s 21, and he’s already told me that he plans on staying there that long.”

Wengerd said she worries that when he gets out, he’s going to re-offend.

“None of his teenage years were spent in society,” she said. “I have concerns about what he’s going to do when he gets out because I don’t know if he’ll be able to integrate back in society.”

State Highway Patrol records show that one inmate in the Indian River Juvenile Correctional Facility hit a youth specialist in the face with a rock because he was about to be released and wanted to get sent to adult prison.

When the inmate, Bobby Mayberry, 20 , finished his statement, he asked whether the state trooper could help him with something.

“Mayberry stated that the only reason he was acting out was because he was about to be released, and he wanted to ... be sent to the adult system. Mayberry said he did not want to be released because he did not want to re-offend and hurt anyone else,” the investigation report said.

He is currently locked up in the Grafton Correctional Institution, an adult prison in northeastern Ohio, on charges of felonious assault and aggravated menacing.

About half of those released from Youth Services facilities return to prison within three years.

Promise of reform

Agreements as a result of federal lawsuits were supposed to bring reform and force the Department of Youth Services to remedy problems present for decades.

In 2008, the state reached agreements in two lawsuits alleging unconstitutional treatment of youth in juvenile prisons. One lawsuit, United States v. State of Ohio, was brought by the U.S. Department of Justice and the other, S.H. v. Harvey Reed, by lawyers representing juvenile inmates.

The most-recent annual report, filed this month, said facilities are getting better.

“In some areas, like reducing the youth population in secure confinement and regionalizing services, Ohio has truly become a model to the nation,” wrote Will Harrell, who acts as a monitor and oversees the agreement between the state and those who sued. “These reforms have come about because of the hard work on the part of DYS’s staff and administration.”

Still, Harrell noted problems in the system, including youth gangs that “exert a powerful negative influence” at Indian River, as well as staffing shortages and an increase of sexual misconduct in September and October of 2011 at the Scioto facility. In the Circleville facility, teachers aren’t engaging students, and “poorly performing teachers must be identified and held accountable,” the report said.

“Although I believe there are ongoing deficiencies ... I take great pride in the work we have done together to improve the conditions in Ohio’s juvenile correctional facilities,” Harrell wrote.

But prison staff members, as well as youth advocates, say that even after years of court monitoring, the facilities are still troubled. Violence is commonplace, youth aren’t getting enough help for mental illnesses, gangs are prevalent and staff morale is low.

Descriptions filed with the lawsuits paint a grim picture of life inside the prisons, depicting abuse both physical and sexual, excessive isolation, and a lack of adequate medical and mental-health care.

A 2011 filing in the Department of Justice lawsuit describes allegations that juveniles made against staff members during a Scioto site visit by court monitors. Inmates said that some staff members:

Attempt to enter sexual relationships with youth and engage youth in discussions about sexual activity.

Berate or talk down to youth by calling them inappropriate terms, such as bitch, ho, or retard.

Bribe youth with food, snacks or extra free time in exchange for favors from the youth, such as filing a complaint against a disfavored youth.

Blackford described the disillusionment he experienced when he witnessed the violence and dysfunction in the youth prisons.

“I took this job three years ago thinking that I’m going to change some kids. And now I’m scorned, basically,” he said. “When you believe in something and that attitude starts to change … I haven’t given up, but I’m getting kind of tired of it.”

While conditions are not ideal, some advocates acknowledge the progress in the youth prisons.

“They’ve gotten qualified staff,” said F. Edward Sparks, president of the Juvenile Justice Coalition, an Ohio organization that promotes community-based alternatives to incarceration.

The facilities have “child psychiatrists and other qualified staff members with specialties in mental health so kids had availabilities of those services that they didn’t have before,” he said.

One success Youth Services points to is the dramatic reduction in population. The state closed four youth prisons in the past three years alone, and the number of juveniles incarcerated in the state-run institutions has dropped from nearly 2,000 in 2007, when the state operated seven youth prisons, to a little more than 500 in 2012.

The department is encouraging juvenile courts to send teens to community-based treatment programs instead of youth prisons, using the state prisons only as a last resort.

But in closing facilities, the state has left the four remaining youth prisons with Ohio’s most-violent youthful offenders, making those institutions even more volatile.

Karl Wilkins, a youth specialist at the Scioto Juvenile Correctional Facility, said the prison grew more violent when it took in most of the youth from the Ohio River Valley Juvenile Correctional Facility, which closed in 2011 and was located in Franklin Furnace.

“We received the worst-possible juveniles in the state, and that’s what caused an increase in violence,” he said. “The closing of Ohio River Valley is a large part of it.”

The youth prisons are reaching a boiling point, according to staff members.

“I want other people outside of our little clique or group to know what’s going on, and I hope somebody else will step in and say, ‘Hold on. We need to look at this and see what’s happening,’” Blackford said.

“These kids are not getting help, and they’re going back into society,” he said.

Pamela Engel is a fellow in Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism Statehouse News Bureau.

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